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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29002503">i will see your body bare, and still i will live here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethinginwater/pseuds/somethinginwater'>somethinginwater</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Peaky Blinders (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Mentions of Violence, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, Tommy being Tommy, Violence, dont know about that one really, oc trying hard not to take tommys bs but taking tommys bs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:28:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,443</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29002503</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethinginwater/pseuds/somethinginwater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A typical Saturday night: Tommy shows up to her house, battered and bruised, and Anne tries very hard to resent him. It doesn’t work.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tommy Shelby/Original Character(s), Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character of Color, Tommy Shelby/Original Female Character(s), Tommy Shelby/Original Female Charcter of Colour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i will see your body bare, and still i will live here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this was a very quick and unedited piece that i will probably never pick up again. anne is black because i do what i want and peaky is too white. pls let me know what u think!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Midnight strikes and there comes a beating on her door. Anyone else would flee through the window, fearing coppers, debt collectors, wayward opium fiends high and confused. But Anne does not. Wide awake, she tugs on her dressing gown and pulls open the door.</p><p> </p><p>Tommy staggers in. She shuts the door softly behind him and follows his trail of blood to where he’s braced himself against her kitchen counter, fiddling with her pastries absently as if he isn’t bleeding out in her stuffy little flat. She doesn’t want to think about Tommy dragging himself around Small Heath just to come here, doesn’t want to think about what surely happened before that—a fist, a bullet, a knife, blood, bone. She doesn’t want to think about how this isn’t the first time, how this won’t be the last time, how she wants it to be, how she doesn’t, how she hates Tommy, how she doesn’t.</p><p> </p><p>She doesn’t want to think.</p><p> </p><p>Anne crosses her arms as Tommy brings a cinnamon bun to his battered face and sniffs it as if it were something unknown. He furrows his brows, nodding. “Pastry,” he says simply. “Didn’t think you liked baking.”</p><p> </p><p>She narrows her eyes and he places the pastry back down gently, or with as much gentleness as a man like him could wield. “Like you, I’m just full of surprises, Tom.” </p><p> </p><p>His eyes are on her back. “You’re angry, aye?” She does not turn around. She lifts the tray off the counter and slides it into a cupboard. Above it, the window is propped open. Something like shame curdles her insides; she pulls the window closed and draws the curtains.</p><p> </p><p>“Not angry,” she says, finally turning to meet his eyes. They are pale and silent as the grave. He has taken his jacket off, slung it on a chair, made himself at home. “Wouldn’t waste that on you. Just confused, see, ‘cause the last time you dragged yourself here you told me I’d never have to see you again. But look at us now, Tom. What are we doing?”</p><p> </p><p>“You think I wanted this?” he says very quietly, and it is not a question. But if it were, she would say yes; yes, of course he wanted it. Yes, she thinks, but only to reconcile her own desire. After all, it is not a question.</p><p> </p><p>“Seems like it; Pol’s home, isn’t she? She could patch you up just fine.”</p><p> </p><p>That cuts deeper than anything that has ever had him torn open and bleeding in her flat, because Pol would never let him do this, work his way through Birm blood-soaked and barely living. Pol would scold him into some form of agreement (not submission, never submission with Tommy) and he’d reel it in a little, learn to take less scrapes and cuts, get smarter and faster just for her. But Anne doesn’t have that kind of hold on him. Wild horse he is, tossing his fine head in defiance, and she’s the new stablehand, unsteady and unknowing, trying fruitlessly at authority, watching in equal parts awe and irritation as he bites and stomps and kicks. Or perhaps she’s an old stablehand who he’s learned to out-manoeuvre, out-manipulate, though she was never manipulating him in the first place. Yet that’s Tom, isn’t it? Seeing enemies in those who seek to love him, unearthing cruelty in tenderness.</p><p> </p><p>“You want me to go, is that it?”</p><p> </p><p>Oh, and he knows it. He knows she cannot turn him away. She could never turn him away. For all he has become — terror of Small Heath, gangster, gun trafficker, slaughterer, if those rumours are to be believed — she cannot turn him away. Although the fine cut of his cheekbones has grown more severe, and those pale eyes marred with gloom, she loves him all the same, and she cannot turn him away. </p><p> </p><p>So she sucks in a sharp breath and retrieves the worn box of supplies she keeps under her sink that she has never used on anybody else. Tommy slips with ease into the chair and it is like they were never fighting at all, a repeat of every time this happens. She will scold herself later — <em>too soft, Anne, too quick to give in</em> — but now as she brings her warm hands to Tommy’s cold chest, kissed with bruises that move like breaths across the pale slope of his skin, she knows she would do it all again.</p><p> </p><p>“‘T was the Italians,” he says simply. She does not look up, she will not give him that, but she clicks her tongue. “I know you always want to know.”</p><p> </p><p>He’s playing into her hand, isn’t he? That’s the Tommy way. Feign tenderness just to get some in return. Perhaps it isn’t feigned, perhaps he wants to make things right, perhaps. But it is always a bet — a gamble — when it comes to the matters of Tommy’s mind and heart, and gambling is a sport at which he is most proficient, after all. That’s his very operation, from his profession to himself as a man. She is a nurse. No room for odds or chances there. </p><p> </p><p>Every breath he takes is more of a whistle and his chest swells with more than the weight of his lungs. She runs a hand over his ribs to solidify a suspicion. He hisses. She softens enough for a tired imitation of humour. “Well they did a very good job.” At that, he smirks. Does not smile, never smiles. “Broken.”</p><p> </p><p>“Guessed that,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>Anne does not want to think, but she does. She thinks of Tommy, now, bones snapped, stumbling here on two unsteady legs and sheer will just for her, and she feels suddenly very selfish for finding some semblance of comfort in that kind of pain. Selfishness is a shivery sort of feeling, and she shrugs to get it off her as she prods at another one of his ribs. Hissing: also broken. “I can’t fix broken ribs, Tommy.”</p><p> </p><p>“Why not?” he says, as if he were asking her to stitch up a shallow cut or rewrap and clean an easy wound. “You’re a nurse.” He motions to his discarded jacket draped across the back of another dining chair. "Could you get that for me?”</p><p> </p><p>Choosing to ignore his first stament entirely, Anne lifts his jacket and rustles it, the familiar metallic song of a cigarette case jingling in its pocket. She fishes it out and cracks it open and plucks one. Just one. She rummages in the pocket for a lighter and finds one, dull and silver, and lights the cigarette. She takes a drag first. It feels like nothing at all. Carefully, she fits it between Tommy’s waiting lips. He eyes her as he inhales.</p><p> </p><p>“Hospital,” she says, packing the medical equipment back into the box. Her hands are shaking. Why? “You need to go to the hospital.”</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t, sweetheart. They’ll find me. Do me in worse than they already bloody ‘ave.”</p><p> </p><p>She sees it, then. Sees what he wants, truly. The tenderness, the mildness. A good boy, he’s been: on his best behaviour. Of course there was a reason why. “I can’t let you stay, Tom,” she says, though she can, and she wants to. She feels that itchy selfishness again, crawling up the curve of her back, scratching across her shoulders. “You need to go back.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m here now. Can’t go anywhere like this. You know that more than anyone, don’t you? Nurse, smart girl you are, my Anne.”</p><p> </p><p><em>I can’t, Tom,</em> she wants to say. <em>You know I can’t and it’s hurting me and I’m not your Anne, not anymore, and you need to stay away from me, Tom, you need to go.</em> But she does not have his willpower, his scrutiny, his indifference. She is already snapping shut her box and leaving it out on the side for later use. She is good for nothing but loving too much and too hard. “Come on then,” she says. “Let’s get you to bed.”</p><p> </p><p>He stubs out his cigarette and Anne hooks an arm under his own, combines their strength to pull him up and together they haul him to her bedroom. She flushes momentarily, because there is something close to nakedness about bringing him to this intimate place, this place that is more her than anything else. But if he notices this, he is too drowsy to say. By the time he is tucked under the floral covers, he is fast asleep and the most peaceful she has seen him in a long time.</p><p> </p><p><em>Dream of something good, </em>she thinks. <em>Just for me, dream of something good.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>feedback is very much appreciated &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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